RE: How many (peer reveiwed) journals are there?

["Sally Morris \(Morris Associates\)" <sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>]

The presence or absence of a current year subscription price in 
Ulrich's is a pretty strong indicator that a journal is or is not 
active.  However, I can't see from the site how the 'active' flag 
is determined and by whom; I will find out.

The alternative status flags are 'ceased' (about 5.5% of the 
database when I conducted my study) and 'forthcoming'.  I did not 
break this down into OA and non-OA journals to see if there was 
any significant difference, but only 1506 active refereed OA 
journals were listed, compared with 2591 titles listed at that 
time in DOAJ (this was, I believe, after the 'pruning' referred 
to), so - for OA journals, at any rate - the database is clearly 
not complete.

I see from Ulrich's site 
(http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/faqs.asp) that the 
'Refereed' information from publishers is in fact supplemented by 
Ulrich's editors' own research, though this still leaves open the 
question of what exactly is meant by 'refereed', since as other 
have pointed out it can mean different things for different 
disciplines and indeed journals.  I once published a highly 
prestigious medical journal where the editor only ever consulted 
anyone else if he was in doubt about a paper, which happened 
rarely.

Sally Morris
Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of David Prosser
Sent: 12 November 2008 22:29
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: How many (peer reveiwed) journals are there?

Sally

The point is that nobody (as far as I'm aware) knows how many
subscription titles listed as active by Ulrich's are actually
dead.  We don't know how quickly and assiduously they remove
titles.  As we can't make any useful comparisons your 10% figure
is rather meaningless (as well as being out-of-date, as Lars
mentioned).

David

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Sally Morris (Morris
Associates)
Sent: 11 November 2008 22:22
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: How many (peer reveiwed) journals are there?

AS I pointed out in the original article, a subscription journal
which published no or hardly any articles would die because the
publisher would have nothing to sell.  An OA journal does not -
thus an effectively dead journal (or one publishing hardly
anything) can remain apparently on the 'live list' indefinitely.
Thus I think it would be highly unlikely that one would find a
similar percentage of subscription journals in a similar case.

Sally Morris
Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of David Prosser
Sent: 10 November 2008 01:25
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: How many (peer reveiwed) journals are there?

Sally

Looking back at your research I see that 'a lot' means about 10%.
I know that the DOAJ has worked hard to weed-out journals that
are no longer current, but these things are fluid and there will
always be some listed that are not currently publishing.  I'm
sure that some of the subscription titles listed in UIrich's as
being active are actually no longer current. Unfortunately, you
did not do a comparative study so we have no idea if 10% really
is a lot compared to subscription titles or just reflective of
the general churn in the journals market.

David C Prosser
Director, SPARC Europe
Web:    www.sparceurope.org